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LaPierre blasted Obama at the 56th Annual Weatherby Foundation International Hunting and Conservation Awards in Reno, saying his remark that “we cannot mistake absolutism for principle” was an attempt to turn common sense upside down.

“I urge our President to use caution when attacking clearly defined absolutes in favor of his principles,” LaPierre said. “Mr. President, just because you wish words meant something other than what they mean, you don’t have the right to define them any way to want, because when words can mean anything they mean nothing. When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti and our rights and our freedoms are debased.”

He said the Bill of Rights, which contains the NRA’s cherished Second Amendment, was such an absolute. LaPierre alleged that Obama was seeking to “redefine freedom.”

“We believe we deserve, and have every right to, the same level of freedom that our government leaders keep for themselves, and the same capabilities and same technologies that criminals use to prey upon us and our families,” he concluded. “That means we believe in our right to defend ourselves and our families with semi-automatic firearm technology.”

So Wayne wants every citizen to have an army of their very own to call upon?

Apparently there’s a new CT going around, started by the Examiner, that Obama’s forcing out any military officers who won’t accept orders to shoot Americans. Supposedly this comes from a military “hero” who is relaying the allegations of a friend to a human rights activist/author.

I am afraid that it is going to come to some sort of “patriotic uprising” staged in such a mannar as to provoke some sort of government intervention, thus “proving” that Obama has been “looking for an excuse” all along.

These guys are locked and loaded, they are out looking for something to set them off.

I am afraid that it is going to come to some sort of “patriotic uprising” staged in such a manner as to provoke some sort of government intervention, thus “proving” that Obama has been “looking for an excuse” all along.

These guys are locked and loaded, they are out looking for something to set them off.

I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if that happens it must be put down hard. To be clear, this does that the ‘rebels’ need to be not just arrested but clearly seen as defeated and humiliated. It must be made clear to one and all that war is not a game for those who must fight it.

I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if that happens it must be put down hard. To be clear, this does that the ‘rebels’ need to be not just arrested but clearly seen as defeated and humiliated. It must be made clear to one and all that war is not a game for those who must fight it.

Or imagine some large-scale natural and/or man-made disaster scenario with a temporary breakdown of order and communications over a large area.

Those guys would be itching to set themselves up as Judge Dredds and get out there with their guns and keep us all “safe” from all the “terrorists/looters”.

And again, from the other Atlantic article, the highest correlation between anything that they measured and gun deaths, beyond even poverty, was McCain votes. Places that voted McCain had higher gun deaths.

And again, from the other Atlantic article, the highest correlation between anything that they measured and gun deaths, beyond even poverty, was McCain votes. Places that voted McCain had higher gun deaths.

If I see anything circulated on #TGDN that is actual fact, I might faint.

And again, from the other Atlantic article, the highest correlation between anything that they measured and gun deaths, beyond even poverty, was McCain votes. Places that voted McCain had higher gun deaths.

Gun nuts were not out in force during the 2008 election campaign, the way they are now.

I don’t understand why the Cardinal and the other Catholic higher-ups in San Francisco who conspired to cover up the crimes of pedophiles haven’t been arrested for it. In this case, the evidence is absolutely clear, they were conspiring to hide the evidence from the authorities.

You’d think that someone would be able to put together a map with firearms deaths (and separately firearm homicides) on a per capita and raw number basis by county or smaller geographical unit than state. But so far, I haven’t come across that kind of map.

There’s a few maps that look at major metro areas, but that leaves out data from the rest of the country. The FBI data sources can give some inkling as to what’s going on, so it’s not like someone couldn’t put that kind of map together.

You’d think that someone would be able to put together a map with firearms deaths (and separately firearm homicides) on a per capita and raw number basis by county or smaller geographical unit than state. But so far, I haven’t come across that kind of map.

There’s a few maps that look at major metro areas, but that leaves out data from the rest of the country. The FBI data sources can give some inkling as to what’s going on, so it’s not like someone couldn’t put that kind of map together.

What you suggest would involve doing actual work and research, neither of which the #TGDN is interested in or capable of doing.

You’d think that someone would be able to put together a map with firearms deaths (and separately firearm homicides) on a per capita and raw number basis by county or smaller geographical unit than state. But so far, I haven’t come across that kind of map.

There’s a few maps that look at major metro areas, but that leaves out data from the rest of the country. The FBI data sources can give some inkling as to what’s going on, so it’s not like someone couldn’t put that kind of map together.

Not allowed to get funding for it, if you’re an academic researcher.

People forget that a lot of the boring data work that goes into public policy comes from federally funded primary research in universities.

People forget that a lot of the boring data work that goes into public policy comes from federally funded primary research in universities.

Actually it shouldn’t be too difficult to create such a chart. I work with chart controls, there is a tool called Geochart that allows you to fill in a map with data. You just have your SQL select command bind the data to the chart to populate it.

Wingnut heads are going to explode over this one - Secretary Clinton tells Senate Panel to read the classified report regarding the details of the Benghazi attack. Which they will obviously interpret as a coverup.

This is an obvious scam. It doesn’t take a paid staffer to monitor a single Twitter hashtag. In fact, an unpaid college intern armed with HootSuite or TweetDeck can easily monitor multiple hashtags and conversations AND find many creative ways to goof off in the process.

This is an obvious scam. It doesn’t take a paid staffer to monitor a single Twitter hashtag. In fact, an unpaid college intern armed with HootSuite or TweetDeck can easily monitor multiple hashtags and conversations AND find many creative ways to goof off in the process.

The year 2007 the 10th warmest year for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature for 2007 was the fifth warmest since records began in 1880.

Now you can easily find information like “Current employers of people who like Racism”, “Mothers of Catholics from Italy who like Durex”, “Family members of people who live in China and like [the very very banned] Falun Gong” and other fancy, sometimes potentially life-endangering information (“men seeking men, living in Tehran”).

Looks like some stalker video put on YouTube making fun of various lizards. There’s about 17 of them posted on YouTube by the same person, lots of them involving Hitler, with subtitles. Yeah, funny stuff.
//

Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.

The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.

If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members, raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after the mission in Benghazi was overrun.

In particular, she said the Islamist militant takeover of northern Mali had created a “safe haven” for terrorists to “extend their reach” and work with other extremists in North Africa, “as we tragically saw in Benghazi,” though she offered no clear evidence of such ties.

What exactly is a sockpuppet and also a bot? I’ve been wondering about that.

Sockpuppet usually refers to extra accounts all belonging to one person. Here, we typically use it to mean a banned member coming back under a new name. “Bot” means an account that doesn’t actually have a real person behind it, it’s just a script programmed to automatically post comments, pages, or harvest other info.

Sockpuppet refers to someone who maintains multiple aliases/accounts (and will use the multiple accounts to make it appear as though more people agree with the person’s point than would otherwise be possible).

Bot is short for robot - it’s an automated program that will act in a specified fashion. It can mean anything from a crawler who searches a given site for specific information (text searching for a service like Google or other search site) or to automate a posting (as in the aigle-bot).

Essentially he was claiming that there was a denial by the State Department that the attack was an organized attack. Her response, in a VERY condescending tone (paraphrased) was “Of course it was organized - do you think that it was a group of people out for a walk who said ‘hey, let’s go attack the American Embassy’?”

Essentially he was claiming that there was a denial by the State Department that the attack was an organized attack. Her response, in a VERY condescending tone (paraphrased) was “Of course it was organized - do you think that it was a group of people out for a walk who said ‘hey, let’s go attack the American Embassy’?”

You know the Republicans have gotten to the last nerve when folks like Hillary and Obama are starting to talk in sarcastic, condescending tones. Joe Biden probably would have responded “so who’d you fuck to get this job?”

DIABALY, Mali — Burned-out cars lie at the entrance to liberated Diabaly. Nearby, the stench of death rises from the window of an army vehicle discarded by the side of the road; inside are the bodies of four Malian soldiers, presumably slaughtered by jihadists.

The Islamist army stormed through the town last week and left a destructive trail. They ruined the church, smashing away its cross and decapitating religious statues. They looted the pharmacy and destroyed homes. They were joined by Malian soldiers who defected, according to some local residents.

Although the insurgents controlled Diabaly for only a few days, its terrified residents cheered when they left and French and Malian soldiers swept in.

“They are not Muslims,” 53-year-old resident Oua Diarra said. “Muslims cannot be thieves. Muslims cannot loot. These men were terrorists.

“The Islamists punished the children simply for crying at the terrible things that they saw … We were so terrified.”

Newbie question here: What’s up with the ‘Amazon deals of the day’ threads?

Those and the overnight video threads sort of act as open threads for mid-day and mid-evening. That was useful for keeping overall comment counts down on a particular thread. Which did (does?) make a difference for some Lizards whose browsers had issues with processing threads when the comment lists got long.

I still had the page up in a tab, and just watched a few seconds of the video. Stupid, creepy, stalker tripe. Am stunned that manji (who has way the hell too much time on its hands) hasn’t been ban-hammered yet.

Essentially he was claiming that there was a denial by the State Department that the attack was an organized attack. Her response, in a VERY condescending tone (paraphrased) was “Of course it was organized - do you think that it was a group of people out for a walk who said ‘hey, let’s go attack the American Embassy’?”

That’s prolly gonna leave a mark. SoS Clinton is not to be trifled with.

That’s prolly gonna leave a mark. SoS Clinton is not to be trifled with.

She’ll probably get a lot of that today, though.

Considering she’s on the way out, I wouldn’t blame her if she told these folks where to stick their BS, she’s given them the answers they supposedly want, and if they want to keep perpetuating a conspiracy theory to boost their reelection chances, then it’s none of her concern.

Oh wow. That is one serious GAZE that Secretary Clinton is shooting at McCain right now.

The United States has a lot of important foreign relations stuff going on that she is nominally supervising. And she understands the importance of communicating with the House and Senate. And she knows that McCain knows this as well. So that she is irked by McCain grandstanding and essentially wasting her time should not be surprising at all.

Wait, would that include someone like Phil Mickelson who hinted at retirement after claiming that his taxes in CA (fed and state combined) would hit 62% or something like that, but then backtracked.

As it is, tax experts note that he’s probably getting taxed closer to 50% and probably less than that if he’s got a competent tax accountant or lawyer since there are any number of deductions, credits, and strategies that can reduce the tax burden (such as a federal credit for state taxes, charitable deductions, etc.)

And if he’s not taking advantage of any and all of these legal methods, he should probably fire his accountant.

Most Congressional hearings fall into that category - they’re designed so as to give the Senators or Reps a platform on which to pontificate and hear their own voices - more so than the witnesses called to testify.

Most Congressional hearings fall into that category - they’re designed so as to give the Senators or Reps a platform on which to pontificate and hear their own voices - more so than the witnesses called to testify.

Wait, would that include someone like Phil Mickelson who hinted at retirement after claiming that his taxes in CA (fed and state combined) would hit 62% or something like that, but then backtracked.

As it is, tax experts note that he’s probably getting taxed closer to 50% and probably less than that if he’s got a competent tax accountant or lawyer since there are any number of deductions, credits, and strategies that can reduce the tax burden (such as a federal credit for state taxes, charitable deductions, etc.)

And if he’s not taking advantage of any and all of these legal methods, he should probably fire his accountant.

I think the wingnut is referring to the commonly held delusion that conservatives have, that there is a large population that thinks “Why should I work at a job that pays $5000/month, when I can get $500/month in welfare and food stamps!”

They really believe there are people out there living it up on food stamps.

Wait, would that include someone like Phil Mickelson who hinted at retirement after claiming that his taxes in CA (fed and state combined) would hit 62% or something like that, but then backtracked.

As it is, tax experts note that he’s probably getting taxed closer to 50% and probably less than that if he’s got a competent tax accountant or lawyer since there are any number of deductions, credits, and strategies that can reduce the tax burden (such as a federal credit for state taxes, charitable deductions, etc.)

And if he’s not taking advantage of any and all of these legal methods, he should probably fire his accountant.

And I doubt any of my “friends” on FB who were all over that Mickelson remark will now come out and report that Phil walked it back. And none of them remarked that they’d like to have his problem - paying 60% of millions rather than paying 30% of fifty thousand or so. Just used it to link to various whines about liberals and such.

What the hell? Why are they telling Clinton to keep her answers short when they’re allowing 5-minute monologues by Republican Senators prefacing every one of their questions?

It’s obvious the whole point of this is for them to be dicks - about everything. I wouldn’t put it past these assholes to bring up Monica Lewinsky at some point, with a helping of Vince Foster on the side.

MOSCOW – Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said on Wednesday that the main obstacle to peace in Syria is the opposition’s “obsession with the idea of toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime.” He also said the Kremlin’s Emergency Ministry flights that removed 77 Russians from the conflict zone early Wednesday did not signal the start of an evacuation.

In an annual news conference, Mr. Lavrov made clear that Russia was unlikely to alter the position it had staked out in Syria, opposing any international measures to force Mr. Assad from power after nearly two years of violence. More than 60,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations.

I wonder how many more genocidal numbers of dead Syrians will it take for the Russians to stop supporting Assad?

What the hell? Why are they telling Clinton to keep her answers short when they’re allowing 5-minute monologues by Republican Senators prefacing every one of their questions?

Because it’s all Kabuki theater. They have no interest in her answers to their monologues and they have no expectation of somehow brilliantly catching her in some kind of TV-court-drama-style slip up. So what’s most important to each GOP senator is that they get their opportunity to insert their rant into the record, to be able to signal to their conspiracy addled base that they fought the good fight against this diabolically villainous SOS & admin. They can then all go on Fox & push something like, “Well the liberal media is covering for her & Obama so we failed to bring them all down. Sorry, we tried.”

The one on-going dilemma with foreign policy right now is that the United States (and most allies) have an interest in getting involved with various failed states.

If they ignore them the areas often and fairly easily convert into havens for the terrorist groups to train and recruit in; e.g. Afghanistan. But active involvement in a failed state is an expensive, bloody, long-term effort - often portrayed and viewed as “imperialistic” as well by detractors. And the US acting as “global policeman” falls roughly into this category as well. And with a little reading you see the isolationist mindset come out advocating that the US stop acting this way, stop giving foreign aid, and essentially attempt to pull-back into the shell of its own borders.*

The dilemma is choosing which route to take. Pay now and keep intervening (or attempting to intervene), or pay later since ignorance is going to lead to a less stable world with terrorist attacks going on and almost inevitably to further attempts by foreign terrorists to strike directly at US soil.

* - Never mind that the US has never really done this. Even at the height of the isolationist run in the 1920-30s the US was still mucking around in Central America to prop up its economic interests in that sphere of influence.

And I doubt any of my “friends” on FB who were all over that Mickelson remark will now come out and report that Phil walked it back. And none of them remarked that they’d like to have his problem - paying 60% of millions rather than paying 30% of fifty thousand or so. Just used it to link to various whines about liberals and such.

September 17, 2008, U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen
Militants dressed as policemen attacked the embassy with RPGs, rifles, grenades and car bombs. Six Yemeni soldiers and seven civilians were killed. Sixteen more were injured.

Thus you see why they take their five minutes and grandstand. Getting facial recognition on the news and then invites to the Sunday shows for more visibility. All part of building up the national recognition that is needed for a serious run at even higher office and/or influence in the GOP.

Usually the honesty of the outrage is easy enough to determine. This one’s an odd duck, though: I honestly cannot tell if these morons (both the congressional version and the twitter version) think that “a bad thing happened” = “treason” or “four people died” = “biggest tragedy in a decade”.

OT, but Charles I love the new Twitter embed code, it makes the tweets so nice looking and easy to read!

I really do appreciate all the time and effort you expend on the technical details of this site. If other web developers put in even half the time you do, the internet would be a better functioning place.

WALLACE, Idaho — A North Idaho man who pleaded guilty to shooting at a helicopter because he was upset that it was flying too close to where he was hunting has been sentenced to at least a year in prison.

The Lewiston Tribune reports First District Judge Fred Gibler sentenced 58-year-old John E. Ross of Fernwood to four to eight years in prison on Tuesday. However, he could be eligible for parole after a year if he successfully completes a rehabilitation program in prison.

Ross pleaded guilty in November to felony interfering with or destruction of an aircraft. Two shots hit the helicopter in the fall of 2010, including one that hit a crucial part of its steering mechanism. The experienced pilot was able to land safely.

None summed it up it better than host Sean Hannity, who said last week: “We don’t talk a lot about — what were the intentions of our founders and framers? And we have Stalin, um, we have Hitler, we have countries, tyrannical. They talked a lot about that.”

I think the attempts to deflect with Bush era intel failures (iraq, 9-11, etc) are unhelpful. It only stresses the partisan nature of the complaints and reinforces the fact that fingers would be pointing in the opposite direction if someone else was in the White house. The exact security details and who knew what when isn’t really important. No amount of reasonable embassy security would have prevented what happened in Beghazi.
The real problem is regional. The entire region is awash in weapons, weak governments and poorly trained armies. There aren’t many serious foreign policy blunders from this administration but North Africa seems to be one. Our hands off support in Mali backfired, post Q’Daffy Lybia needed some aggressive house cleaning.
One of the few things of substance to come out of the hearings today was Clinton citing Somalia as the model for our policy in North Africa. I think we need something more aggressive than that.

As a rough estimate, I assumed each of the Ammo cabinets in the photos posted can hold somewhere around 50 000 rounds.

Assuming that every Wal-Mart, Bass Pro and Dick’s Sporting Goods in the country have similarly empty cabinets, that means that approximately 185 million rounds of ammunition have been purchased over the past month.

If that’s not worrying enough, consider this:

- My numbers do not include other gun stores of which there are thousands across the country

- My numbers do not include gun shows, of which there are many around the country

- My numbers do not include online ammo sales, which I’m sure have been booming since Newtown

Factoring that in, we can safely say there is well over 300 million rounds of ammunition that’s been purchased in the past month…and even that may be an underestimate.

I think the attempts to deflect with Bush era intel failures (iraq, 9-11, etc) are unhelpful. It only stresses the partisan nature of the complaints and reinforces the fact that fingers would be pointing in the opposite direction if someone else was in the White house.

No they fucking wouldn’t. They never did. There were no six-month media circuses about any previous embassy attack.

Councillor Danny Healy-Rae , who spearheaded the motion, claimed that citizens drinking and driving in rural areas had “never killed anyone” and argued that the permits would actually help prevent “a lot of them falling into depression,” reports Irish news site TheJournal.ie.

Healy-Rae also owns a pub in County Kerry, according to the Guardian.

“A lot of these people are living in isolated rural areas where there’s no public transport of any kind, and they end up at home looking at the four walls, night in and night out, because they don’t want to take the risk of losing their licence,” Healy-Rae told TheJournal.ie.

Looks like the U.S. isn’t the only country where the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Hmm. I just heard frogs. Either Killgore is in the house, or someone here at work has a somewhat different ringtone installed. (Someone here does have the female voice saying “Are you there?” as a ringtone. Annoying.)

I think the attempts to deflect with Bush era intel failures (iraq, 9-11, etc) are unhelpful. It only stresses the partisan nature of the complaints and reinforces the fact that fingers would be pointing in the opposite direction if someone else was in the White house.

Actually, it demonstrates the opposite: that all those embassy attacks happened and fingers did not get pointed, people didn’t make a big stink about it and come up with crazy conspiracy stories.

I think the attempts to deflect with Bush era intel failures (iraq, 9-11, etc) are unhelpful. It only stresses the partisan nature of the complaints and reinforces the fact that fingers would be pointing in the opposite direction if someone else was in the White house. The exact security details and who knew what when isn’t really important. No amount of reasonable embassy security would have prevented what happened in Beghazi.
The real problem is regional. The entire region is awash in weapons, weak governments and poorly trained armies. There aren’t many serious foreign policy blunders from this administration but North Africa seems to be one. Our hands off support in Mali backfired, post Q’Daffy Lybia needed some aggressive house cleaning.
One of the few things of substance to come out of the hearings today was Clinton citing Somalia as the model for our policy in North Africa. I think we need something more aggressive than that.

When I first moved down here from Connecticut the newspaper headlines were different than the ones I was used to in the NYC area. One was about a farmer who was pissed that someone knocked over his prized bull and cut off it’s tail.

The other story was about two guys who went deer hunting. One of them shot the other one in the leg by accident. His defense was when his buddy came out from behind a tree he mistakened him for a rabbit. His charge? Hunting rabbits out of season. I shit you not.

I don’t think there are any clear solutions. I’m open to suggestions. We are talking about a very large and complex area which is becoming increasingly unstable. Making things worse is sub-Sarahan Africa always gets neglected because there’s not enough financial/business motivation to get the area sorted out. The French seem to think the situation is urgent and I tend to agree with them.

According to family in Waco, there is literally no place in the city where they can currently buy .22LR or 9mm ammo. Of course, they drank the kool aide in 2008, so they’re pretty sure that Dark Lord Obama is going to swoop in on a black dragon any minute and take away their pistols. Then, after the populace has been disarmed and have no way to Defend Liberty, he will return for their incandescent light bulbs and SUVs.

According to some family in Waco, there is literally no place in the city where they can currently buy .22LR or 9mm ammo. Of course, they drank the kool aide in 2008, so they’re pretty sure that Dark Lord Obama is going to swoop in on a black dragon any minute and take away their pistols. Then, after the populace has been disarmed and have no way to Defend Liberty, he will return for their incandescent light bulbs and SUVs.

Nigeria has seen an uptick in violence since it sent an initial contingent of 190 troops to Mali last week, including two Mali-bound soldiers killed in a bomb attack on Saturday in the country’s centre.

A group calling itself Ansaru claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers and claimed it was in response to the situation in Mali.

Hmm. I just heard frogs. Either Killgore is in the house, or someone here at work has a somewhat different ringtone installed. (Someone here does have the female voice saying “Are you there?” as a ringtone. Annoying.)

I like the one with a man’s voice saying, “Rrrrrrrriiinnnnnnggg! Rrrrrrrriiinnnnnngggg!”

PALERMO, Italy — Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.

“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.”

And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.

The hostage takers had themselves revealed their diverse origin last Friday when a spokesman told the Mauritanian news agency Agence Nouakchott d’Information that their ranks included not just members from Algeria, Mali, Niger or Mauritania but also people from Egypt and Canada.

“Unlike what was happening in other jihadist fronts, jihadism in Algeria had recruited locally but now we are witnessing not an internationalization but a transnationalization of this extreme violence,” said Salma Belaala, a scholar of North African Islamic movements at Warwick University.

She said Algerian authorities have long worried that toppling Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya would create instability in the region.

“So today we’re now in a gaping security vacuum on the Libyan side, and there areas that are out of control of the central state.”

As a rough estimate, I assumed each of the Ammo cabinets in the photos posted can hold somewhere around 50 000 rounds.

Assuming that every Wal-Mart, Bass Pro and Dick’s Sporting Goods in the country have similarly empty cabinets, that means that approximately 185 million rounds of ammunition have been purchased over the past month.

If that’s not worrying enough, consider this:

- My numbers do not include other gun stores of which there are thousands across the country

- My numbers do not include gun shows, of which there are many around the country

- My numbers do not include online ammo sales, which I’m sure have been booming since Newtown

Factoring that in, we can safely say there is well over 300 million rounds of ammunition that’s been purchased in the past month…and even that may be an underestimate.

Hmm. I just heard frogs. Either Killgore is in the house, or someone here at work has a somewhat different ringtone installed. (Someone here does have the female voice saying “Are you there?” as a ringtone. Annoying.)

I put Ann Romney’s “Stop it. This is hard.” rant on my phone for a few weeks and assigned it to my brother’s phone number. Freaked me the fuck out when he called. I finally had to delete it because that condescending voice of hers actually irritated me. My favorite ringtone, from my pre-smartphone days, was the lead-in riff to AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells.

I put Ann Romney’s “Stop it. This is hard.” rant on my phone for a few weeks and assigned it to my brother’s phone number. Freaked me the fuck out when he called. I finally had to delete it because that condescending voice of hers actually irritated me. My favorite ringtone, from my pre-smartphone days, was the lead-in riff to AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells.

I wanted to use Bach’s Toccata and Fuge in D minor, but it sounded awful coming from a little phone speaker. :(

I like to ask people who buy that much ammo when and where they expect to use it. Most of it will sit in a closet or drawer at their house indefinitely…or until they realize they’ve wasted hundreds of dollars on ammo they’ll never use and end up selling it to an even nuttier friend.

Explosions rang out at 3 a.m. last week as the radical Islamists descended on the town of Diabaly, home to a Malian military camp. Residents cowering in their homes believed the Malian soldiers would protect them.

Instead dozens of Malian troops fled in fear, ripping off their uniforms and taking off on foot into the dark.

“We thought for sure the Malian army would hit back,” said local resident Gaoussou Kone of the Jan. 14 attack. “We were surprised to learn that our soldiers ran away. There is no African country that is strong enough to fight these people on their own. They are too well-armed.”

Hillary Clinton rips Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis) a new asshole in Benghazi hearings.
Paraphrase: What difference does it make if it was a protest or just some guys out for a walk at night who decided to kill Americans? We have four dead Americans, Senator. Our job is to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I put Ann Romney’s “Stop it. This is hard.” rant on my phone for a few weeks and assigned it to my brother’s phone number. Freaked me the fuck out when he called. I finally had to delete it because that condescending voice of hers actually irritated me. My favorite ringtone, from my pre-smartphone days, was the lead-in riff to AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells.

Heh. I use Miles Davis “So What?” Good tune & nobody around here has anything even slightly like it. I did ponder changing it to “Take Five” or “Blue Rondo ala Turk” after Brubeck died, but I love the other too much.

Nigeria’s president is warning that if Islamist terrorists in Mali are not contained there will be a spillover effect upon some Western and African nations.

President Goodluck Jonathan told the World Economic Forum on Wednesday that terrorists “always want to create crisis” and “that’s one of the reasons why we will have to move fast.”
….
Jonathan thanked France for sending in troops and aircraft to push back the terrorists.

He said the crisis in Libya, where a weak government is struggling to maintain control, has made things worse in Mali since weapons and fighters from Libya have joined the Mali extremists.

Heh. I use Miles Davis “So What?” Good tune & nobody around here has anything even slightly like it. I did ponder changing it to “Take Five” or “Blue Rondo ala Turk” after Brubeck died, but I love the other too much.

I used to use the Imperial March from Star Wars as my mother’s ringtone. And yes, she knew and she thought it was funny. It was fine until I accidentally left my phone on in class and she called. Explaining that one was fun.

Russia said on Wednesday the rebels fighting French and African troops in Mali are the same fighters the West armed in the revolt that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

An Islamist alliance of al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian groups captured northern Mali last year, armed with weapons seized from Libya after the fall of Gaddafi.

Russia backed a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention in Mali but is still bristling that its abstention from a U.N. vote over Libya in 2011 allowed NATO air strikes to help the rebels trying to topple the veteran leader.

Russian officials accused the United States and its allies of overstepping their mandate.

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From Sen. Schumer's Facebook page: There are two simple reasons the comparison does not hold water. First, the federal RFRA was written narrowly to protect individuals' religious freedom from government interference unless the government or state had a compelling interest. ...

UPDATE MARCH 30: NEW TIME FOR LIVE STREAM - 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on ...

What's this? Another article on Cracked about how incorrigibly tribal-minded us homo sapiens are? Well, yes. But the proverbial devil is in the proverbial details. Proverbially. It's still worth reading. That's what I'm getting at. Everyone is talking about Scientology ...

China attacks the biggest code repository in the world. After battling a distributed denial of service attack for four days, GitHub on Monday was able to restore normal service levels. The primary target of the assault is greatfire.org, which is ...

An American woman--presumably not Muslim, though she doesn't say one way or the other--married to a Libyan man is taken aback when her 9-year-old daughter suddenly wants to start wearing hijab. This is the story of how conflicted she felt ...

NEW YORK, March 27 (Reuters) - Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, ...

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare law that took aim at a bureaucratic board labeled by some Republicans as a ...

Depending on the outcome of a hearing scheduled for Monday, a 33-year-old Indiana woman could face up to 70 years in prison for what she says was a miscarriage. Reproductive rights advocates say her case is a disturbing example ...

The number of things getting plugged into the "Internet of Things" has already reached the point of satire. But there's a new, extremely low power technology that's being prepared for market that could put computing power and network access ...

Are conservatives anti-science? Spoiler: Conservatives aren't anti-science or pro-science. But, they are pro-common-sense. And once more scientists adopt common sense approach to science, they'll find that they have the support of conservative politicians - the people whose job it is ...

cracked.com Once the fighting started, a lot of people died, well over a million on our side alone. For the war to continue, a constant stream of new fighters had to join up, and they didn't have the benefit of ...

Here is an interesting article on one of Tail Gunner Joe's sick witch hunts that has, unfortunately, been forgotten. I try not to feel schadenfreude of the fate of McCarthy's side kick, Ray Cohn, but I never succeed.

About the Graphic How should a woman try to get ahead in a male-dominated workplace? Perhaps the answer lies less on women "manning up" and more in how businesses value their employees. Many women confront this tension as they ...

If we accept the idea of Orthopraxy over Orthodoxy, then what does evangelism look like? What is the Witness of those who try to follow the Way of Christ Jesus? To evangelize is to spread the good news that we ...

A short column in The Nation that is a must read. The primary difference between liberalism and conservatism, at least in theory, is that the latter is an ideology and the former isn't. Conservatism, as Milton Friedman argued, posits that ...

Blow off Snowden all you like, but what was revealed to be true is still true. The NSA lacks oversight with power. FISA is already too much and now they casually exceed even that generous provision. The world first learned ...

This is a powerful admission of culpability and I applaud his courage in making it. It really should be read in its entirety. Glenn Ford should be completely compensated to every extent possible because of the flaws of a system ...

Sarah Vine of the DM gets it wrong: SARAH VINE: Teaching 11-year-olds about rape is a form of child abuse The problem with this country, I've come to realise, is that it treats adults like children and children like adults. ...

Frank says:

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions. -- Playboy Interview, April 1993